A scanner is a device connected to a computer that converts a document into a digital image that is transferred to the computer. The most common scanner is the flatbed scanner where the document is placed on a glass window for scanning, but there exist also other scanners such as the sheet-fed scanner and the hand-held scanner.
With the sheet-fed scanners, the document is carried along by a motor, like in the case of a fax machine. It is the document that moves and not the sensors or the glass pane. The advantages of sheet-fed scanners are their compactness and portability. Examples of sheet-fed scanners are the IRIScan™ and IRISCard™ developed and commercialized by I.R.I.S. SA.
The IRIScan™ is a compact and light-weight scanner able to scan A4 pages in color. It is connected to a computer through an USB cable. It comes with a text recognition software (runs on the computer, not on the scanner) that allows to convert the image of the scanned document into a file readable by a word-processor (e.g. Microsoft Word) or a file intended for archiving (e.g. the PDF format of Adobe).
The IRISCard™ is a compact and light-weight scanner able to scan business cards in color. It is connected to a computer through an USB cable. It comes with a business card recognition software (runs on the computer, not on the scanner) that captures the information they contain and creates electronic contacts to be sent to a contact manager, such as Microsoft Outlook.
A hand-held scanner is of smaller size than a sheet-fed scanner, so is particularly portable. A hand-held scanner has to be manually moved over the document. Contrary to a sheet-fed scanner, it makes it possible to digitalize books or other documents of which the pages are attached to each other. A hand-held scanner does not have a motor so that it has only a limited energy consumption.
In order to function, these types of scanners have to be connected to a running computer, through a cable or by means of a wireless technology.